


Warmth

by prepare4trouble



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Ezra is a blanket thief, F/M, Gen, Heating Malfunction, Hera and Kanan are such a mom and dad, Huddling For Warmth, Space Siblings, Space family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 07:57:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14540220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: When the heating fails on the Ghost, the crew try to find ways to keep warm.





	Warmth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mumblingmaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblingmaria/gifts).



> Written for #rebelsfourthexchange on Tumblr, for @herasyndlla

“Um… Hera?” **  
**

Hera finished the line of text she was reading before she looked up from her datapad to find Ezra hovering in the doorway, part-way between the lounge and the hall beyond.  His arms were folded, his hands both tucked in underneath as though he was trying to keep them warm.  Which, now she thought about it, he probably was; it had gotten a little chilly in the room as she had sat there reading.

“What is it?” she asked.  She reached for the cup of caf steaming on the table in front of her, gripped it in both hands, allowing the heat of it to flow into her fingers, and took a sip, savoring the warmth as it traveled down to her stomach.

“I was just wondering if you knew what was going on with the temperature,” he said.

It wasn’t just that room that was cold, then.  Hera frowned, puzzled.  The last scheduled systems diagnostic had been run on time, just under a week ago, and nothing unusual had shown up.  Anyway, the heating was a part of the ship’s life support system, and any breakdown of something as important as that should have triggered an alert, whether they were testing it or not.

She shivered slightly, took another sip of her drink, and began a quick mental run-through of anything that could have caused the problem.  She started with the most obvious; crew error.  “This is probably a stupid question,” she said, but it had to be asked, “but you’ve tried turning the heating up, right?”

He stepped a little further into the room, allowing the door to close behind him.  “Yeah,” he said.  “We’ve all tried it; by the time I got there, the readout already said it should be pretty much tropical in here.  Every time we turn it up, it seems to get colder.”

Hera nodded.  She had suspected as much.  Most likely the heating system — and hopefully  _only_  the heating system and not all of life support — had gone offline.  It had probably happened some time ago, and the air temperature had been gradually dropping ever since.  That meant there was another fault too, causing the system to report as normal.  Great.

Like any ship designed for space travel, the Ghost was well insulated against the extreme cold of space beyond the bulkheads.  Insulation would only do so much, though; with the heating systems offline, the temperature would eventually begin to drop, and it would continue to do so until the problem was fixed, or until they entered the atmosphere of a planet and opened a door.

“This is probably another stupid question,” she began, “but…”

“Yeah,” Ezra interrupted before she could finish.  “I’ve tried turning it down as well in case we’ve passed into opposite-land.  Not surprisingly, that  _also_  made it colder.”

“Opposite-land?”  Hera raised an eyebrow.  Sometimes she forgot how young Ezra still was.  “Actually I was going to ask if you’d run a diagnostic on life support.”

Ezra pushed his hair out of his eyes and grinned a little sheepishly.  “Oh, yeah, that makes more sense.  Yeah, we did that too.  The ship thinks everything’s fine.”

Hera sighed.  The last thing she wanted to do right now was dismantle the air conditioning, but it looked like she was going to have to.  She downed the last of her caf and set the cup on the table.  Oh well, at least the physical activity would keep her warm.

* * *

Chopper was conspicuously absent.  It was probably nothing to worry about, but Kanan still got a little nervous when the droid disappeared for long periods of time.  It was a throwback, he supposed, to the days when Kanan first joined the crew of the Ghost.  For a long time before that, it had just been Hera and Chopper, and he had gotten the distinct impression that Chopper didn’t trust him, and didn’t want him there.  He still wasn’t sure exactly what he had done to eventually won Chopper over, or whether the droid had just gotten used to him, but for a long time, he had been wary about turning his back on the droid.  Apparently, that had never really gone away.

Of course, it was possible Chopper was just helping Hera, which, now that he thought about it, he should probably be doing too.  The rest of the crew had congregated in the lounge waiting for news, and although it really did only take one person to run the diagnostics and complete any necessary repairs, there had to be something he could do to help.

He glanced around the room.  Ezra had acquired a blanket from somewhere and wore it wrapped it tightly around himself; he was sitting sideways on the bench that surrounded the holotable, leaning his side against the backrest.  Zeb stood not far away, glowering at him with arms folded.

Sabine sat at the other side of the table to Ezra, a cup of hot caf clutched between both hands for warmth.  Kanan’s own drink sat cooling a short distance away.

“How cold does it get in space?” Ezra asked.  “I mean, most of the stars are suns, right?  So…”

Sabine gave him a look.  “It gets pretty cold,” she said.

“Right.”  He tightened his blanket a little.  “That’s what I thought.”

Every eye turned when the door opened and Hera walked through.  She glanced around the room.  “So this is where you’re all hiding,” she said.

“Did you fix it?” Ezra asked.

Hera didn’t reply at first.  She made her way wearily across the room and sank into a chair before she shook her head.  She was tired, Kanan could tell that at a glance.

“The sensor that monitors the onboard temperature was malfunctioning.  I managed to fix that, but all that means is the temperature readout’s going to be accurate again.

Kanan picked up the cup of caf he had made for himself and offered it to her.  “I made you this a while ago,” he said.  “It might not be too warm any more, but it should still be drinkable.”

She accepted it gratefully, took a long, appreciative sip and smiled her thanks.  “I can fix it,” she added, “just, not now.”

“Are you sure fixing the sensor won’t have just sorted the problem out?” Sabine asked.  “Maybe the heat wasn’t coming on because the ship already thought it was warm?  Maybe now it can read it again…” she stopped when Hera began shaking her head.  “Yeah, I guess you thought of that.”

Hera nodded.  “It was my first thought,” she said.  “That’s why I took the time to repair it.  It wasn’t until I’d done that and went to look at the rest of the system that I noticed some of the components are worn out.”

The sensor should probably have reported on that long before it became a problem, Kanan thought.  But it could have been out of action for a lot longer than the heating, reporting back a false ‘okay’ every time they checked.

“I might be able to fix it tonight,” Hera added, “but it would only be a temporary patch.  The best thing to do is set a course for the nearest world with a reliable vendor and get replacement parts in the morning.”

There was a pause as everyone looked around, gauging reactions.  Zeb was the first to speak.  “Great, and the kid’s already helped himself to all the blankets.  Isn’t Chopper supposed to be in charge of making sure things work around here?” He glanced around, “Where  _is_  Chopper, anyway?”

Kanan frowned.  Maybe the droid hadn’t been helping Hera after all; he hadn’t come back with her, anyway.

“We’re  _all_  in charge of making sure things are in working order,” Hera said, on the defensive immediately.

“And I’ve got  _one_  blanket, not all of them,” Ezra added.  He raised his arms a little, waving the blanket around as though to demonstrate.  “I’m pretty sure there’s more.  Anyway, you can hardly complain about the temperature.  You’ve got fur.”

Zeb glared at him.  “We only had one blanket, so you  _did_  take them all.  And since it was my room first, it’s  _my_  blanket.  And I don’t have that much fur, I still feel the cold.  Anyway, it wasn’t the temperature I was complaining about, it was  _you_.”

The last thing they needed was for an argument to break out now.  Kanan moved to place himself in-between the two of them like a barrier.  “Why don’t you…” he began

“Hey!” Ezra interrupted, still focussed on Zeb and completely ignoring or not noticing Kanan’s attempt to stop him.  He leaned exaggeratedly to his left to look around Kanan and glare right back at Zeb.  “Don’t blame  _me_  because  _you_  were too slow.”

“You cheated,” Zeb countered.  “I wasn’t too slow!” He looked at Kanan now. “He used the Force to grab the blanket before I could get it,” he explained.

“But I could only do that because you weren’t fast enough,” Ezra insisted.

The two of them both glanced quickly around the room, looking for backup, two sets of eyes bypassed both Kanan and Hera, and settled on Sabine, who had until now been minding her own business drinking her caf.

“You agree with me, right?” they both said almost simultaneously.

Sabine’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and she looked from one to the other, then shrugged and took a sip from her drink.  “Oh, I am  _not_  getting involved in that,” she said.

Good.  The last thing they needed was for the whole crew to get involved in an argument.  The last time it had happened, it had gone on for days, dragging everybody in on one side or another before it had finally petered out.  Kanan hadn’t been surprised to find out a couple of weeks later that the whole thing had been engineered by Chopper.

Chopper, who still wasn’t around…

Zeb folded his arms defensively and turned as though he was addressing the whole room.  “It  _was_  cheating, anyone would move slower than usual in this cold, Ezra included.”

Great, so they were still on this.

Ezra shook his head.  “Yeah… this isn’t really cold.  Try sleeping outside on Lothal in the middle of the winter.  Better yet, try running from the Empire in it, you’d soon learn how to move quickly.”

“Lothal?”  Zeb’s eyes widened in mock confusion and then realization.   _Oh_ , you mean that planet where the temperature never drops below freezing?  Maybe talk to me about the cold after you try camping out on an ice moon with an Imperial Agent for company.”

Hera sighed pointedly.  She fixed both Ezra and Zeb in turn with a glare.  “That’s enough, both of you.”  Kanan turned to look at her in surprise.  Somehow, her voice was even colder than the air in the room.  “Yes, it’s cold.  No, it’s not below freezing, and it’s not going to be, the ship is better insulated than that.  We’ll be fine overnight until I can get it fixed, but if anybody wants to do the temporary repairs themselves, I left the tools by the entrance to the access tube.”

Silence filled the room for a moment before Ezra broke it.  He grinned.  “Yeah, get on with it, Zeb.  In the meantime I’ll get to have a nice quiet start to the night without you snoring in the bunk below me.”

Zeb held out his hands defensively.  “I can’t fit in there,” he said.  “You all know that.  Best person to do it is the kid.”

“The best person to do the repairs is  _me_ ,” Hera said firmly.  “And I will, when I have the right parts.  If anybody  _does_  want to spend a couple of hours tonight doing a temporary patch for me to undo in the morning, feel free.  It’ll keep you warm at least.”

Kanan could think of better ways to keep warm.  One in particular, but if that failed… he raised an eyebrow in Hera’s direction, hoping to convey his thoughts by body language alone.  Two people, one tiny bunk.  A blanket, shared body heat.  They could keep each other warm until the morning.

Hera either didn’t pick up on it, or chose to ignore.  “I’m going to set a course back to Lothal,” she said.  “And then I’m going to bed.  I suggest you all do the same.  And there are more blankets in the emergency supplies closet; nobody’s going to freeze, Zeb.”

“Wait, Lothal?” Zeb said.  “That’s seven hours in hyperspace.  There’s got to be someplace closer than that.”

Hera nodded.  “There is, but there’s a vendor I trust on Lothal,” she explained.  “The last thing we want is to buy faulty parts, or something from a stolen ship that might have someone looking for it.”  

She had a point.  

Kanan watched her get to her feet, leaving the now-empty mug of caf behind on the table, and head out the door.

“There’d  _better_  be another blanket there,” Zeb said in a low tone the moment the door had closed.

Kanan sighed deeply to himself, thankful he didn’t have to spend any longer with the two of them tonight.

* * *

Hera didn’t miss Zeb’s attempt to resume the argument the moment he thought she was out of earshot.  She ignored it. She didn’t have the energy to deal with it now.  Anyway, Ezra probably really had taken the only blanket, and if so, Zeb was entitled to be annoyed.  If the argument continued into the morning when the heating was fixed, she would step in to avoid it becoming a repeat of the last big argument, but the chances were, it was just frayed tempers tonight.

Behind her, she heard the door open.  She turned, expecting Kanan.  Instead, Zeb and Ezra both attempted to run through the door at the same time.  They got stuck for a moment before Ezra managed to wriggle free and took off at a sprint, closely followed by Zeb.  Sabine walked out next.  She watched Ezra and Zeb for a moment, shook her head dismissively, then headed back to her quarters.

Kanan did appear eventually.  He jogged a couple of steps to catch up with her.  “You might want to rethink the whole ‘plot a course first’ plan,” he said.  “Unless you don’t mind the cold, you’ll probably want to get a blanket now, before they all end up in Ezra and Zeb’s quarters.”

He was probably right.  She couldn’t remember exactly how many spare blankets she had left there, but there weren’t many, and most of them were the thin foil survival blanket kind, designed to keep in the heat but with minimal thought for comfort.  “It’s fine, I have a few spares in my quarters,” she told him.

Kanan nodded.  “Right,” he said.  He walked beside her for a few strides in silence, then, “You know, I didn’t have that much forethought.”

Hera smiled to herself.  He was angling for an invite.  In fact, he was probably  _counting_  on an invite.  She decided to let him squirm a little.

“So, it’ll be pretty chilly in my quarters tonight,” he said.

“It will,” Hera agreed.  “The temperature’s only going to drop from now.  You should probably go and grab a blanket before they’re all gone.”

Kanan didn’t look worried; she wasn’t fooling him.  That was okay, she hadn’t really expected to.  

“It’ll already be too late,” Kanan said ruefully.  “I’ll be okay though.  Don’t worry about me.”

She sighed and shook her head, still not losing the smile.  “You know,” she said, “it is a pretty big blanket; there’s probably enough room for two.”

Kanan raised an eyebrow.  “Is there?”

They had stopped walking now, she noticed.  Standing in the doorway to the cockpit, facing each other, each waiting for the other to say something.  Apparently, he was going to make her ask him.

“Well,” Kanan said, and shrugged.  “I hope you enjoy it.”

He turned to walk away.  She waited a second, until he took a step, and then another.  Then, “Kanan?”

He turned back to look at her again.

“I don’t suppose you want to share?”

He grinned, and he almost looked relieved, like he had genuinely thought for a moment that she was going to leave him to freeze.  Well, it would have been his own fault if she had.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said.  He paused.  “Not your quarters though.”

Hera considered it, then shrugged.  “That’s fine, two in a bed is easier in your quarters anyway.”

“Maybe not there either.  I have an idea.”

She frowned, eyes narrowing.  “Okay…” she said, “What are you thinking?”

* * *

Kanan smiled to himself as he watched Hera’s reaction.  He could actually see her muscles relax as the door to the Phantom closed behind her and the working heating system immediately began to warm the air to a comfortable level.  “Good, right?” he said with a grin.

Hera nodded.  “Pretty good,” she agreed, then hesitated.  "Why didn’t I think of this?”

“Too busy trying to fix everything as usual,” Kanan told her.  He took the blanket from her hands and spread it on the floor.  “That should make things a little more comfortable,” he said.  “But honestly,  _I’m_  surprised you didn’t think of it too.  It was my first thought when you said the heating couldn’t be fixed.”

“It  _can_  be fixed,” Hera corrected.  “It just can’t be done tonight.  No, it  _could_  be done tonight, but it just didn’t seem worth spending three hours working, just to do it all again tomorrow.”

Kanan nodded.  “That’s what I meant,” he assured her.  Hera got defensive about her ship, in the same way she got defensive about Chopper.  Which reminded him.  “Where’s Chopper, anyway?  You don’t think there’s any chance he’s responsible for…”

“No,” Hera said quickly.  “Like I said to Zeb, it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure the ship’s running properly.  Or if you’re wondering whether it’s sabotage, no.  For one thing, wear and tear like that would be too difficult to fake, and for another, Chopper knows I’d take him apart if he even thought about doing something like that.

Kanan walked across the blanket on the floor and sat in the co-pilot’s seat.  “You know,” he said.  “We still have that bottle of Toniray wine I won playing Sabacc a year or so back.  It’s supposed to be pretty great, I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

“And you think the heating going off is a special occasion?” Hera asked.  She smiled, placed a hand on a hip and tilted her head to one side to look at him.  “What  _exactly_  are you hoping is going to happen tonight?”

“Nothing!” Kanan assured her.  He realized a second after that it sounded like a lie.  It wasn’t, but it had sounded like one.  “Okay, not nothing,” he admitted, “I was just thinking it’d be nice to spend some time alone.  You know, talk over a glass of wine — I didn’t refrigerate it, but I don’t think we need to worry about it being warm — relax, wait out the journey.  Maybe curl up on the floor together, fall asleep in each other’s arms…”  He smiled.  “Of course, if you want me to be thinking about  _other_  things, that could be arranged.”

Hera shook her head in a faux-disapproving way, then frowned. “I wonder if… no, it would take too long.”

“What?”

“The components in the Ghost and the Phantom are compatible,” she explained.  “I was thinking I could have taken parts from here and installed them in the Ghost, then put the replacement parts in the Phantom tomorrow.”

Kanan thought about it.  “Sounds like it’d work,” he said.

“It would, but it’d take too long, we’d be almost there by they time I’d finished, and then I’d  _still_  have to start fitting new parts.”  She sat down in the pilot’s seat next to him.  “It seems a little unfair that we’re warm in here while everyone else freezes out there, though.”

She was right, of course, it was horribly unfair.  But there was nothing wrong with being selfish once in a while.  Well, as long as the others didn’t find out.  “It’s not going to get  _that_  cold out there,” he said.  “And they do have blankets.”  He paused, and smiled.  “Well,  _Ezra_  does, at least.”

Hera shook her head.  “We should tell them,” she said.

Kanan sighed.  She was right, of course.  He pulled out his comms device.  “Do me a favor,” he said.  “When you’re falling asleep to the sound of Zeb and Ezra arguing, remember this was your idea.”

Hera grimaced, but didn’t try to stop him.  Disappointing, but not unexpected.  He raised the communicator to his mouth, but stopped when the door opened, and Ezra stepped inside.

The cold air rushed in after him, filling the Phantom almost instantly.  The blanket was still wrapped around his shoulders looked like some kind of improvised cape, and the surprise on his face told Kanan that he hadn’t expected to find anybody else here.

“Uh… hey,” he said.  He stepped into the cabin and the door closed behind him.  The heating system began to work to reheat the area, and Ezra looked down at the blanket on the floor.  “So, I guess I was right about this place being warm.  I wasn’t sure the heating would be switched on when it’s docked on the Ghost.”

* * *

This was  _really_  not the evening he had planned.  Kanan looked around the Phantom.  Hera was still seated in the pilot’s seat, hands resting behind her head as she stared at the blank view screen.  In the hold, Ezra had made himself comfortable on the blanket that Kanan had spread out earlier.  His own blanket still hung loosely over his shoulders, almost as though he had forgotten it was there.  At the other side of the floor, Sabine was unrolling a sleeping bag, while Zeb perched uncomfortably on two of the seats at the edge of the shuttle.  Chopper moved around them, weaving his way up and down the area as though he was pacing, occasionally ‘accidentally’ bumping into Ezra’s arm, or Zeb’s foot.

Kanan sighed and glanced sideways at Hera, and she gave him a small, sympathetic grimace.  He shrugged in response.  Honestly, he should have predicted this.  Not only did nothing ever work out for him, but Ezra had years of experience in finding a warm place to sleep on a cold night; Zeb and Sabine too, on a lesser scale.  Plus, none of them were stupid.  He had thought he was so clever thinking of taking shelter in the Phantom.  As it was, he could at least still say he thought of it first.

The only crew member whose presence there didn’t make sense was Chopper, who, as far as Kanan was aware, didn’t feel the cold.  But his being there could be explained easily enough.  Whether he had followed someone there, or worked out for himself where they were, he was there to annoy them, and clearly taking great pleasure from it.

“Hey!” Ezra yelled as the droid ran into him for at least the third time.

Kanan closed his eyes briefly and offered up a plea to the Force that the night would at least pass quickly.

Zeb sighed.  “I can’t believe you were all going to leave me to shiver in my quarters while you sat here in the warm,” he complained.

“Sabine was going to go and get you,” Ezra assured him.  He grinned, and shrugged his shoulders.  The disputed blanket fell to the floor behind him, unnoticed by Ezra.  “I told her not to bother,” he added.  “You know, since you took six blankets I figured you’d be warm enough.”

“I’m bigger than you, if you haven’t noticed,” Zeb said.  “One of those tiny things doesn’t cover me.”

“I  _was_  going to tell you anyway,” Sabine argued.  She glared at Ezra, who shrugged.  “But before I could, you showed up anyway.  Why took you so long, by the way?”

“Yeah, what took you so long?” Ezra echoed.  “I found this place ages ago.”

“Ages?  How long exactly?” Sabine asked.  She looked at him suspiciously.

Ezra swallowed.  “Well… not  _ages_  ages.  Not that long at all, really.  And when I thought of it, if it was warm here, I was going to tell you all, but then Kanan and Hera were here already, and…” He turned to look at them.  “Hey, you guys were here first, how come  _you_  never told us we could get warm in here?”

Hera looked at him too, not expecting an answer the way the other three were, but as though she was interested in the excuse he was going to come up with.  He resisted the urge to put his head in his hands, barely.  “We were about to tell you,” he said.  “What?  You think the two of us were going to camp out in here while you all slept out there in the cold?”

“Yeah,” Zeb said.  “Actually, that’s exactly what we’re thinking.”

Kanan sighed.  He didn’t really have a defense, other than he would have decided to call them eventually, even without Hera’s insistence.  Probably.

“We were about to tell you,” Hera said.  “In fact, we were about to tell you and then leave you here to keep warm.”

Confused glances echoed around the Phantom.  One of them belonged to Kanan.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind, that is?” Hera said, turning to face him with an expression on her face that told him to play along.  She turned back to the others.  “We had an idea that means we might be able to repair the heating tonight.  But in case it doesn’t work, you might as well stay here and keep warm.”

Kanan didn’t get it.  The only possible repair plan Hera had mentioned was taking parts from the Phantom, and she had dismissed the idea.  If she had changed her mind, the heating would go out on the Phantom too, meaning that the moment the door opened, anyone inside would be just as cold as outside.

“Coming?” Hera asked.  She got to her feet and began to pick her way around Ezra, Sabine and Chopper.  Kanan watched her for a moment, confused.  Surely she wasn’t really going to go out there into the cold and start doing repairs now?  And surely she didn’t expect him to do the same thing?  

Apparently she did.

With a deep sigh, he got up and followed her across the Phantom, bracing himself for the blast of cold air when the door opened.

* * *

Outside of the Phantom, it was cold.  That shouldn’t have been a shock, but Kanan still found himself surprised by it.  The temperature seemed to have dropped a couple of degrees over the past hour or so, and he found himself wrapping his arms around his body against the chill, muscles tensing against the cold even as he tried to force them to relax.

He looked at Hera.  Her pose mirrored his own; arms folded tightly, hands rubbing up and down her arms.

Kanan waited for the door of the Phantom to close behind them before he spoke.  “You know, it’s pretty cold out here.”

“I noticed,” Hera told him.  “Like you said, it’s not that bad though.”

Kanan stamped his feet a couple of times; it didn’t really help.  She was right, it was comparable to a chilly day on Lothal, a few extra layers and it would be fine.  It wouldn’t be too cold to work on… whatever Hera was thinking.  “So, what’s the plan?” he asked.  “I thought it’d be a waste of time to do any repairs tonight.”

Hera smiled and shook her head.  “It would,” she said.

“So…?”

“So I’m not going to do any repairs,” she said.  “I just needed a reason to get us out of there.”

“Out of the one warm place on the ship?” Kanan asked.  “Well, you did it, I guess.  Well done.”

Hera sighed exasperatedly.  “Did you want to spend the night camping out in close quarters with everyone?”

“Um…” Kanan said.  He didn’t particularly, but if the alternative was freezing in his bunk, he might take the Phantom.  “No?” he tried.

“Good,” Hera said.  “Because it’s a little colder than I’d prefer out here, but it’s been a while since we had the ship to ourselves, and you know, it’s amazing what a couple of insulated blankets and some shared body heat will do.”

That… was not what he had been expecting her to say.

“Kanan?” Hera asked.

He blinked.  “Yeah?”

“I said, it’s up to you.  We can go back in if you prefer.”

Kanan took her hand in his and turned toward crew quarters.  “You know,” he said, “now we’re out here again, it really doesn’t feel that cold after all.”

It did.  But she was right, it should be possible to warm things up very quickly, if they put their minds to it.

“So,” Hera said.  “Where did you say you were keeping that Toniray wine?”


End file.
